Hello everyone!

Autumn has come to Germany. The temperatures have dropped off significantly, and it rains alot. However, when the rain clears away and the sun comes out, then it is really nice. The deep orange sunlight makes everything glow like it was made of gold and the trees turn a wide variety of colours. With this backdrop, we headed to Heidelberg a couple of weeks ago. Carola's family was meeting there for a ball. A few of Carola's friends came too, which was nice (one I had previously met in St Louis).

Heidelberg has be almost completly preserved as it was spared from widespread boming during the war. The story is that an American pilot had been to Heidelberg before and absolutley forbid that it be bombed because he knew how pretty it was. It still is.




After our busy weekend in Heidelberg, we had a couple of weekends to our own devices here in Frankfurt. It has been nice to just relax and get to know the city. Last Sunday it was so nice out that we just had to get out in the sun and go for a walk along the river Main.


There was a guy out in his row boat and it looked like he was having a wonderful time. I could see myself enjoying rowing. There are a couple of rowing clubs along the river and they have races in the summer.

We walked north up to the river, as we live on the south side of Frankfurt. Then we crossed the river and walked on the north bank. It was very nice there as the sun was shining intensely and also reflecting off the river. There were many people out enjoying the sun, lying on the park benches and playing with their kids. Right before we headed back to the south side of the river, I found a point where the tree leaves framed the tower of the Dom Church quite well. The Dom church is one of the oldest churches in Frankfurt.










I was really missing seeing the leaves change in Colorado, so it was nice to get out and get some kind of a fall experience.











The Book Fair

The day before our walk along the river, we went to the world's largest book fair. I had imagined something like rows and rows of old books with rows and rows of boring quiet Germans. It turned out the opposite was true. All the proof I need is the picture below:


There were all kind of people dressed up like their favourite book characters. It was a real party atmosphere. They had 78,218 people come over the weekend that we were there. We visited the hall that held the publishers of english langauge books. It was about the size of 5 football fields. And everywhere everyone was speaking english. It was strange for me. We also ended up finding the Estonian section, and had a wonderful time looking at all the Estonian books. The Estonians had a good laugh at my now very rusty Estonian.

Last weekend, the weather was wonderful and Carola and I had a wonderful time just wondering around and exploring the city a little bit. The weather was a bit cool, but it was very sunny and the air was full of fall smells. We decided that it would be a crime to be indoors on such a weekend, so we decided to go to the zoo.







The zoo is rather small, but it has a good selection of animals, and it is under renovation, and should be quite nice in a few years. I brought my new camera with the long lens so I could get some good photos of the animals. This was particularly true for the tigers.



Carola and I ate lunch near the monkeys they liked to run around and always look what is going on.

























The baby monkeys were very very cute and swinging around everywhere.








The past few days have not been nearly so nice - at least with the weather. But the other morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, came a huge double-rainbow outside our window. Carola noticed it, and I ran to get my camera. Here is the photo.








A few weeks ago, Carola and I went to go check out hotels in the town where our wedding reception will be, Chieming. Below is the reception hall.




We also got to look at the church were we want to get married. The church has yet to answer as to whether or not they are free that weekend, but we hope that this will be the place.